


if you could, save me

by chadara



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 15:49:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5791468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chadara/pseuds/chadara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>sungjin has only cried three times in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you could, save me

sungjin has only cried three times in his life.

after getting into jype, sungjin moves to seoul and immediately sticks out like a sore thumb. school is hard, kids more preoccupied with making fun of his accent than focusing on their own work, and by his third week in the city he wants to quit. there are too many people, too many unfamiliar experiences that he can’t make sense of. he had always worked best with his friends, thriving off of good energy and conversation, and seoul is – well, it’s everything but that. none of the other trainees really make an effort with him, and he doesn’t blame them – so many people come and go, it’s hard to get close to any newcomer, but for the first time in his life he feels lonely.

when he calls his mother for the first time since school began, it takes nothing more than the sound of her voice for him to waver. soon, he starts spilling everything – how isolating life as a trainee is, even surrounded by people; how much he misses the fresh air of his hometown; how this is nothing like what he’d thought it would be.

he speaks to her for hours, and falls asleep cradling the phone like a security blanket. when he wakes up the next morning, he finds a pillow under his head and a blanket over his body – bright green, like the one he’d had at home, and a note saying there’s tea waiting in the kitchen when he wants it and by the way everyone feels like this the first time and no matter what it’ll be okay and –

it takes him half an hour to stop the tears.

***

when the news comes, it’s delivered in the form of a dry email.

“the following trainees must please come to practice room c on friday for special evaluations. this is concerning new group formations, so be prepared with the latest individual routine you’ve practiced.”

sungjin’s name isn’t on the list. wonpil’s is, junhyeok’s is, and…brian’s is. they’ve only been a group for a few months, but it’s been the most productive time period of sungjin’s life – after a couple of years of feeling stuck, it finally feels right. and now it might be over.

he excuses himself from dinner early, citing a headache, and for the first time since coming to seoul he sneaks out. he’s always been one of the good ones, never getting into any serious trouble, but the dorm feels more suffocating than ever and his bike is conveniently parked right outside.

if anyone sees him, they don’t comment. they can’t, because every person there has gone through something similar, and if this is sungjin’s breaking point – well, it can’t be helped.

as he races along the bike path, he pushes himself to go faster. faster and faster, caution traded for recklessness and safety traded for the adrenaline.

if he lets a few tears escape, well, he’ll say it was the wind.

***

sungjin has never let himself go. prefers to be positive not because he’s fake, but because there’s no use in seeming down – he knows that the others get their energy from him, from his smiles and his jokes and his positivity, so he considers it part of being a good leader. he’s never yelled at his members, not seriously, preferring talk it out over ramen like he learned from his father.

he’s never shown his weaknesses. the others used to think he didn’t have any, back in the old days – the bright, positive, smiling kid with the big voice and bigger dreams who never let anyone around him feel left out couldn’t possibly be weak. it had taken a lot for him to tell them his fears, drawn out over a particularly intense writing session.

_“what if there’s this guy, right, and he feels like…he feels like the things people know and love about him are on the surface. there are probably lots of people who feel like they’re not good enough, not interesting enough, so they cover it up with relationships. romantic relationships, relationships with their friends, people who feel like they’re colourless without people around them to laugh with, to make jokes with. what if we write a song about that?”_

_“sungjin hyung...you know we love you, right?”_

it’s not repression, not really, because he rarely thinks about it. rarely thinks about the darker parts of himself, the ones no one has ever really seen, because he’s a firm believer in constantly bettering and improving upon himself.

sometimes, though, it overwhelms him. on the day of their first concert as DAY6, with the crowd swelling around him and the voices of hundreds of people singing a song he helped write, he feels it. the insecure parts of himself that he doesn’t pay attention to start to creep up on him, and when he sees the fan project with videos from the past six years he can’t help it.

for all that he’s grown, for how far he’s come, he’s never once stopped to take it in. he sees the boy on screen, the one who hadn’t moved to seoul yet, unsure and optimistic and everything he’s tried to hold on to, and he feels the tears leak down his face.

but this time, there are people crying with him.

**Author's Note:**

> in my mind it's wonpil who puts the blanket over sungjin, but i left out the name so you can feel free to imagine whomever you'd like!


End file.
